


Happy Family

by Sandra M (HowNovel)



Category: Starman (TV), Witch Mountain Series - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1993-11-05
Updated: 1993-11-05
Packaged: 2017-10-25 17:22:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/272848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HowNovel/pseuds/Sandra%20M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scott learns that though he's gone through physical human puberty, as the product of two races, his alien puberty is just starting. After a tragic capture attempt in which his father is shot and disappears under the water of the bay, Scott is captured and held by Fox. Jenny makes a deal with Fox - in return for giving him the alien - she will get Scott. Help comes from a surprising source and Fox finally learns humans share the planet with more than one alien.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy Family

Happy Family  
by Sandra M.

 

The beginning of the end came in San Francisco, California.

On a freight train out of Reno Paul had become enthralled with the hobo who was sharing their car; a hobo who loved San Francisco, it turned out. While Scott tried to sleep under Paul's coat he caught fragments of the stories the old man was telling. Of Fisherman's Wharf, of Chinatown, of the Embarcadero. Of the best soup kitchens and places to sleep. Paul listened intently, the rail tracks clacked incessantly, and Scott dreamed fitfully of cable cars and toothless hobos and fish jumping out of the sea. The next morning he wasn't surprised that Paul wanted to see San Francisco. They counted their money over a cheap cafe counter in Nevada and bought two one-way tickets on Greyhound. Anywhere on the map was fine with fifteen-year old Scott, as long as he could be with his father and away from the scaly hands of the governments watchers who chased them. Finding his mother Jenny Hayden seemed more and more remote every day, although Paul kept promising - and since Paul didn't know the arts of deception or pessimism, Scott believed that Paul believed they would one day be a happy family together.

On the bus trip to San Francisco Scott got twice sick, vomiting cheap fries and greasy hamburger and bad cherry pie. He blamed it on the motion of the bus and slept restlessly most of the way after that, his head on Paul's shoulder. When they reached San Francisco he felt better. They checked into a sleazy hotel near Union Square. The first day they spent sightseeing, although Paul was noticeably more enthusiastic than Scott was. On the second day, Scott begged to sleep in.

"Do you feel all right?" Paul asked, his hand on Scott's forehead. "Is it a cold?"

"No, it's not a cold," Scott said. "But you shouldn't get too close."

"I have an immune system now," Paul said, arching his eyebrows in the way he did when something confused him. "That will keep from getting sick, won't it?"

"You can't be sure," Scott sighed. It had been almost six months since Paul had nearly died from a common cold in Houston. Scott had spent a goodly amount of time since reading up on immunology and infections. He didn't think he had a cold now - no runny nose, no sore throat - but he didn't want Paul getting it, whatever it was, and he told his father so.

"You concentrate on getting well," Paul said, frowning, "and I'll concentrate on staying well. Agreed?"

"Agreed," Scott said into his smelly pillow. He thought all he needed was rest. Paul went down to the corner drugstore and bought a thermometer - Scott sent him back, he'd bought a rectal one instead of an oral one - and they found Scott's temperature hovering around one hundred degrees.

"Should we go to the doctor?" Paul asked.

"No," Scott said. Funny how some of the most major decisions were left to him, because the alien who was his father was still struggling to assimilate the millions of details that went into the act of daily living. "We can just wait to see if it goes up or down."

It didn't go up or down, not for the next two days, so Scott stayed in and watched a lot of TV and made Paul go out before they drove each other crazy. The concept that two people who loved each other could still get on each other's nerves was new to Paul too - but Scott clearly illustrated it when he threw a temper tantrum when Paul wanted him to take cold medicine. Scott apologized, and Paul apologized, and they both sat in awkward silence for awhile.

"I'll be fine tomorrow, I promise," Scott said wearily. "Just go get some fresh air for awhile, won't you, Dad?"

He did feel better the next day, well enough to go with Paul on a trolley trip and then to Chinatown. They bought rice and noodles and mingled with the tourists under the flawlessly blue sky. Only late in the day did Scott's stomach start to turn and his head throb from the sun and people and car fumes. He had a near-migraine headache by the time Paul got him back to the hotel.

"Tell me what's wrong, Scott, so I can help you," Paul pleaded.

"I don't know, Dad," Scott said miserably.

The next day he would have gone to one of those walk-in clinics but the headache had disappeared. Over the next week he tried to act as if everything was okay. His sleep, already fitful at best, filled with nightmares of Fox and being captured and of the fiery car accident that had claimed his foster parents' lives. On their tenth night in San Francisco he woke up drenched with a cold sweat, and saw the Maker on the bedside table glowing red in the darkness.

Scott stared at the little sphere, trying to recover from his nightmares, trying to remember if he'd ever seen one of the little alien crystals so blood red. Usually they glowed white in his father's palms. Scott's Maker rarely did anything because his psychic powers were so minimal. Paul thought maybe one day he'd be stronger, but had never said anything about that wonderful, terrible red glow.

"Dad?" Scott asked across the space between their beds, and Paul's eyes opened and focused on the crystal. Scott tried to keep his voice steady. "Why is it doing that?"

"Take it in your hands, Scott, and close your eyes," Paul said softly.

Scott obeyed. The sphere gave off a faint coolness. He wrapped his fingers around it and closed his eyes. The red diffused the back of his eyelids.

"Now concentrate hard, on the television set. Make it rise from the table."

Scott pictured the television set lifting effortlessly from the table and something surged inside his chest, not unlike the crack of a baseball bat and soar of a good home run. He opened his eyes. Everything in the room - the television, the two twin beds, the dressers, the two chipped lamps, the vinyl armchair, even Paul's wallet - floated serenely in mid-air.

Scott's startled gasp sent everything crashing to the floor.

o O o

He slept better than he had in weeks. When he woke the next morning he had a hundred questions for Paul, but his father insisted they go out and get some fresh air. They went down to Fisherman's Wharf and bought sourdough bread and Scott finally demanded, "So what happened last night?"

"I know what's wrong with you," Paul said.

"What?"

"Puberty," Paul said.

Scott nearly choked on the steaming cup of coffee he held in his hands. "Dad," he said, "I've been through puberty. Trust me. My voice changed and everything."

"You went through physical human puberty," Paul said, taking a look around to make sure no one was listening.

Scott focused all of his concentration on Paul. "Physical human - you mean, there's something more?"

"You're the product of two races," Paul said gently, and not with- out pride. "Your genes are Scott Hayden's - and mine."

Scott took several minutes to consider the idea. He swallowed the coffee without feeling it scald his throat. "So what's your puberty like?"

"It's the time when your powers will fully awaken," Paul said, and they sat on a bench and fed the gulls and took in the fresh salt air. Many of the shops were still closed this early in the morning and only a few people were up and about. "It's a time of challenge, when you'll learn what you're capable of - and a time of tests, as you challenge yourself."

"You knew this was coming?"

Paul's cheeks turned pink. He admitted, "I'd hoped, but I didn't know what it would be like for you. The physical effects you're feeling are because your mind is pushing at your body, but we should be able to control that. I'll help you."

Scott grinned. "Puberty, huh?"

"Yes," Paul said. "Puberty."

Scott started to pull his Maker from his pocket. "So I'll finally get to do something useful with this thing - "

He stopped, because the Maker was black.

Paul stiffened in alarm, and his gaze darted quickly around the pier before focusing on two men in suits walking purposefully their way with the air of a mission -

"Scott, run!" Paul ordered, and he pulled Scott off the bench.

They ran for their lives and for their freedom.

They never had a chance.

o O o

It was the shot and Scott's scream that brought George Fox to a running halt.

Damn it, he'd told them no shooting; the alien was too important to go filling up with holes because some trigger happy hotshot wanted to get a marksmanship medal. He skidded to a halt against a railing and focused on Scott Hayden, frozen in the grip of two of the Washington agents. Scott's horrified expression had fixed on the murky water of the bay, where a circle of red was already spreading across the surface. Fox didn't have to be told. He gripped the railing so hard he thought it might snap in his hands and turned to the San Francisco agent with an icy glare.

"I said no shooting!"

One of the Washington agents was already on the radio, calling in the boats with dredging nets; Fox ordered two men into the water anyway. He wasn't going to let the alien disappear without a trace. He looked around, flushed to see that already damned bystanders were gathering. The final capture of Paul Forester and Scott Hayden, the crowning glory of his career, was turning into a fiasco. "Get him into the car!" he yelled to the agents holding Scott. Scott stood frozen, transfixed with shock and horror; when the agents moved to push him into the official car, he started struggling and fighting wildly.

"Dad!" he shouted, over and over, calling for his father - but Paul Forester had disappeared into the murky water, leaving only his blood behind.

o O o

Wendy Patterson sat on the shore of the blue sea, wrapped up in thoughts and clothes as sun began to rise on the last day of August. She was a lone figure on a white beach with a thermos of coffee in her hands. She hadn't slept. How could she sleep? Today was one of the most important days of her life. It stretched out an unimaginable distance ahead of her, dancing, too surrealistic to ever possibly be true. For days the tightness in her chest had threatened to overwhelm her, swallow her up in the black pit of wasted, anxious years. But now she was calm. She was calm, she was composed, she knew what she had to do.

Tia Castaway found her on the beach an hour later, and she sat beside her and they watched the Gulf of Mexico and drank the last of the coffee.

"Well?" Wendy finally asked.

"Whenever you're ready," Tia promised.

"If it doesn't work - " Wendy said.

"It'll work," Tia said.

" - I want to thank you for your help."

The younger woman squeezed her hand encouragingly. "You just keep calm, you hear? It's a hard thing you're going to do, but you can do it."

"Yeah," Wendy said, her eyes on the blue sea, and she stood up and brushed the sand from her legs. "Let's go."

Tia's brother Tony flew the chopper that took Wendy out of Mexico and up into the heart of Texas. Once on the ground she hitchhiked down the long stretch highway and wound up in the small town of Cooper just around ten a.m. By eleven she'd convinced the garage owner that he could rent her a beat up old Chevy for fifty bucks. She lied and promised to have it back by five o'clock.

She drove it out into the desert and around noon found the remote Army base with the barbed wire and heavily armed guards and a scowling sergeant in the booth.

"I'm here to see George Fox," she said.

"No one here by that name," the sergeant said.

"You give him a call and say he's got a visitor," Wendy said, and let herself smile coldly. "He'll want to see me, I promise you that. Tell him Jenny Hayden's at the gate."

o O o

Jenny Hayden was Jenny Hayden again. Not Karen Isley, not Wendy Patterson, not any of a hundred momentary aliases she'd used and discarded like Kotex over the years. She was whole again. The reaffirmation of identity was exhilarating. From the moment the guards arrested her at the gate she could claim her own name again, and she would continue to do so until it was all over. She was Jenny Hayden, and she had come to battle with George Fox to regain her only son.

All those thoughts raced through her head as she sat in the windowless conference room, waiting for the enemy. And the enemy came. He'd put on some weight over the years; his eyes were still ruthless, his body drenched with cologne.

"Quite a stunt," he said, sitting down, as if they were old friends on speaking terms.

"Direct approach usually works best," Jenny said calmly.

"Why did you come here?"

"I want to see Scott."

Not even a blink of surprise. "Who says Scott's here?"

"I know he is," Jenny said.

Fox leaned back in his chair. "Scott's been running around the countryside with the alien for over a year now. You want to find Scott, you should - "

"You can cut the bull," Jenny said. "Don't even try it. I know what you did in San Francisco. I know you've got Scott here. You want to know how I know, you let me see him. Because before I tell you a damned thing, I want to see my son."

"Mrs. Hayden, you are in position to argue with me."

Jenny smiled coldly at him. Screw you, bastard. "Until you know what I know, neither are you."

They argued about for maybe twenty minutes, or at least Fox did; Jenny remained outwardly calm and played out her hand and wouldn't settle for anything but one hour with Scott. At the end of it Fox stormed out, red faced. He would have slammed the door if it hadn't been mounted on pressure hinges. Jenny looked at the cheap wooden table, the folding metal chairs, the mirror with the people behind it who watched and evaluated her. She remembered with painful clarity the last time she'd been forced to play word games with Fox. She'd been trying not to throw up from morning sickness and had just given up smoking for the baby's sake. Christ, what a time.

Jenny pushed those memories aside to focus on the moment. She guessed Fox would let her wait, and he did, for about a half hour. Then two MPs came in, two large and blank faced MPs, two men whose imagination had probably never stretched into the night skies over Texas. Two men who knew very little of starmen and earthwomen and sixteen years of loyalty, pain, fear and love.

The two men who knew nothing of her life took her to her son.

On the way, her knees went weak. Down a corridor, around a corner, past vending machines, did he really want to see her, into an elevator, down two floors, was he really all right, down a hall of security guards and cameras, could he understand what it had cost to give him up, down another elevator, into a golf cart, a mile down an underground road, was she really going to see him, two floors down another elevator and a long white sterile corridor to a locked door stretched before her, to Scott.

The MPs took Jenny Hayden to the door.

They put the key in.

She turned the knob, she opened the door after fifteen years.

o O o

Scott was tired. He always felt on the verge of tears, but he wouldn't let them come. Not in front of Fox, not in front of the faceless doctors or nurses or colonels or MPs, not in front of the cameras that watched him from high in the corner of the room. He couldn't even go to the bathroom without the cameras watching him. From the time they'd brought him in from San Francisco all he allowed himself to feel was gray. No grief over the death of Paul Forester. For him, at least, there would never be any more running. No hatred of Fox, because hate took energy and he barely had enough energy to get out of bed in his gray room. And no fear. Physical pain was simple sensation, and he no longer cared if he lived or died.

Scott barely ate anything they brought him, he only talked in monosyllables, he refused to discuss Paul Forester, and he slept as much as he could. The world was gray, gray, gray.

On this particular gray day he lay on his small, hard bed in the gray room. He knew every detail of that room, from the bed to the dresser to the door, from the two-way shielded mirror on the wall to the small bathroom with no sharp objects in it. He wanted to go to sleep but couldn't. That morning they'd taken him down to the medical clinic for a check-up and another pint of blood. His arm was beginning to scar from all the needles they'd stuck in him. Always losing blood in this gray place. The doctors told him his fever was down but he couldn't work up any enthusiasm for that. If he was healthy they'd just run more and more tests on him, run tests on him for the rest of his life.

After lunch they'd taken him to the parapsychology lab, which he dreaded more and more each day. He'd spent four hours wired to the lab equipment. Even now he could feel the uncomfortable leather chair, the annoying wires taped to his head and wrists, his mounting frustration and anger. The doctors who ran the lab knew nothing about true power. The wanted Scott to bend spoons and read cards and move inanimate objects. Scott couldn't. He wouldn't. Once, about a week ago, he thought he felt the something he'd felt in the hotel room in San Francisco. Some strange undercurrent of power that might just make him able to roll a basketball across a floor, to read Fox's mind, to set fire to the lab, to destroy the base, to plunge everything into the howling grayness he lived in every day - but he didn't have the Maker, and he didn't think he could ever do it on his own.

For those few brief seconds, though, he'd felt like he could destroy the world.

But not now. The guards had brought him back to his room and he lay with his back to the door, wanting badly to sink into oblivion. He thought it was near dinnertime. Dinnertime when? Tuesday? Wednesday? The weeks had blurred. He'd been ill off and on, and he knew the doctors puzzled over the cause. Scott didn't tell them it was alien puberty going wrong. It had to be going wrong because Paul was dead and couldn't help him with it.

For a while he tortured himself with thoughts of what had happened to Paul's body, and finally slipped into a gray doze where thoughts didn't matter anymore.

He heard the door open and woke up. He didn't roll over to see the guard who usually brought the meals. But he didn't hear the trolley, and that made him slightly curious. Someone was standing in the room. Fox, Pritchard, Samson, Julie, who? A chill touched the bottom of his spine and ghostly fingers crept up his back to tap him on the neck and urge him to look.

He rolled over.

A woman. A beautiful, tired-looking woman with dark hair framing a wary face with wide eyes. A beautiful woman he'd glimpsed once before in a desert across a ridge, touched in an illusion created by his father, dreamed of in the anxious nights of running. She was standing there before him, real as the room, and with one word she sliced open his wounds and poured all the lost emotions back into his gray world.

"Scott," Jenny breathed.

And before she could finish the word he was in her arms, crying, clenching each other, squeezing air out of each other, flooded with relief and grief entwined. Scott began to live again, and Jenny found her son.

o O o

Tia Castaway wasn't exactly eavesdropping, but Scott Hayden was, in effect, broadcasting his emotions from a thousand mile high transmitter. She was so happy for Scott and Jenny her own eyes were wet. They deserved the joy and love that had escaped them for so long. They just had a long way left to go before they could keep it.

For the moment, though, they had each other.

She turned to Tony, who had a goofy smile on his face that probably mirrored her own. Twins, extra-terrestrials and residents of the so-called Witch Mountain in northwest California, their thoughts often matched each other.

"Now for phase two," Tony said.

Tia started her truck and drove them off to keep a date with a Starman.

o O o

Jenny Hayden's heart nearly broke in half from joy. Here was the child she'd been forced to abandon twice, here was her baby. He was handsome. He had Scotty's eyes. Scott looked thin and pale, his eyes bruised with exhaustion; he held her so tight she thought she'd stopped breathing. She rubbed his back and felt his sobbing and rocked him back and forth on the bed. Her own tears dripped into his hair, hot and stinging but good. She knew her words were inadequate but she said them over and over, a magic charm to weave around them.

"I've missed you so much," she said. "I'm so sorry, Scott."

Finally he was able to quiet himself down in her arms, and he sat next to her on the bed so close their thighs touched. He took a ragged breath. "How did you get here?" Then, with anger, "Did they capture you?"

"I came to see you," Jenny said ambiguously, cupping his face between her hands and kissing his forehead. She knew there were many things Scott wouldn't understand yet. She thumbed away his tears and examined him closely. "Are you okay? They said you were sick."

"I was. But not anymore." Scott wiped his nose with his hand. Jenny pulled him a tissue from the box on the bedside table. She felt almost giddy with exhilaration of love, wonder, fulfillment. Scott's words crushed her ebullience with, "Dad's dead. They shot him."

"I know," she said. Jenny brushed back a lock of his hair from his forehead. She just wanted to keep on touching him. "But it's Paul Forester's body that died, Scott. What your father was and is can never be destroyed."

Scott took no comfort from that. As far as he was concerned, his father was Paul Forester, and now gone forever. The Starman had told him that he could never clone a human body again; that energy had drained away, to be replenished only in a thousand years. Even if his father's essential being - that part that had travelled through space - had survived, where was it? Shapeless, formless, unable to communicate with any of the three billion sentient beings crawling the planet. Scott wasn't sure that was any better than death.

As much as the death of his father killed him, though, Scott now had his mother.

And a decidedly uncertain future.

"What will they do to us?" he asked her. He didn't think Jenny had would have an answer but he need someone to help him, someone who could take some of the responsibility and burden off his shoulders. He was tired of struggling to be an adult in such a crazy, mixed up world.

Jenny didn't fail him. "Things will work out, Scott. Look at me. Trust me."

He looked at her, met her unflinching eyes with his. Something powerful and convincing lurked in those eyes, with a force so startling he felt his heart beat faster. He did trust her. He trusted her not just because she inspired it, but because those eyes told her there was a plan. That there was still hope.

"I'm afraid," he whispered, and he didn't give a damn who listened.

"Don't be, sweetie." Jenny smiled a small smile just for him that lit the room brighter than the sun.

He put his head against her chest and listened to her heart beat, and for a few minutes allowed himself the luxury of thinking they would somehow get out of this alive.

o O o

They talked until the hour was up. Scott told her about some of his and Paul's journeys across America until San Francisco; Jenny told him how she been living as Wendy Patterson in North Carolina. She knew Fox would pounce immediately on that information, but Tia had planned for that. The Wendy Patterson part of Jenny's life was over anyway.

Scott became extremely upset when the MPs returned to take her away.

"They won't let you come back," Scott said, agitated. "I'll never see you again."

"No, they will, I'll be back," Jenny promised. Damn Fox to hell if he thought he could stop her. Scott held her so hard Jenny thought her ribs would crack. "I love you, Scott."

He replied, muffled in her shoulder, "I love you, too."

"I'll be back," she promised.

Then she was gone.

o O o

"What's your game?" Fox demanded.

It's called chess, Jenny thought, because I'm about to outmanoeuvre you. It's called poker, because you can't afford to call my bluff. Instead of saying that Jenny leaned forward and stared George Fox right in the center of his milky blue eyes. "Paul Forrester isn't dead."

Fox stopped breathing for a moment, then said, "You told Scott he was."

"I want Scott to think that. I want Scott for myself, I don't want him under Paul's influence anymore. Paul Forrester isn't dangerous, Fox. He's not the dreaded threat to humanity that you think he is. But he is alien, and he's got ahold of my son, and it's because of him that I had to give up Scott in the first place. I'm tired of running. I want Scott and I want peace, and if I have to give you Paul to do it, then I will."

"Where is he?"

"You release me, you release Scott, you let us go in peace - and you'll have him instead."

"Damn it, I won't play games with you!" Fox said, rising and slamming his hand on the desk. "That alien is a risk to this entire world! He's got power unimaginable, and with it he could terrorize nations. You say he's not dangerous. Well, I say that with one blink of his eye he could make the President's plane explodes. I say with one wave of that little crystal sphere of his he could make all of Washington burn. He's running around loose, capable of anything, and you want to star on "Let's Make A Deal?"

Inwardly Jenny marvelled that someone with such muddy thinking could make it to such an important position in the government. On second thought, she reflected, it was amazing he hadn't risen even higher.

"If you really believe all that is true," she said, "then keeping his son hostage out here probably isn't the best insurance policy, is it?"

"He doesn't know Scott's here," Fox said, paling.

"Yes he does," Jenny said. Fox's hand reached for his telephone and she caught it swiftly. "And before you think about packing out, maybe taking Scott to some other base, you just think about how it we found out Scott was here."

Slowly Fox took his hand away from the phone.

"Who's 'we?'" he asked.

"Paul and I. And the people who are helping us."

"What people?" Fox breathed.

"All the others. All the other aliens."

o O o

Tia peered through her binoculars from the ridge and then passed them to Paul, who handled them awkwardly with one arm in a sling.

"I don't like this plan," Paul said.

"I know," Tia said, "but you agreed, we don't have very much choice in this. It took us months and hundreds of people to finally track you to San Francisco, and if Tony hadn't pulled you out of the bay and my Uncle Bene follow Fox, it would have all been over weeks ago."

"You never had to help us."

"Of course we did," Tia said, taking back the binoculars. She pulled her long blonde hair back. "We had to find you and help you as soon as we realized you were on this planet. Aliens have to stick together, you know." She lowered the glasses thoughtfully and looked at Paul. "When our people first came to Earth, our ship crashed and Tony and I were shipwrecked by ourselves. We didn't know who we were, and we didn't know why we could do such weird things. If you'd found us then, you would have helped us find our people - and we're just doing the same."

Paul nodded and gazed at the base, shimmering in the dusk heat.

"Can you feel Scott?"

"He's awake. And broadcasting much stronger now that Jenny's there. Paul, how strong are Scott's powers?"

"Not very strong under the best circumstances. He's just starting to come into his potential. It's why he's been sick."

"I'm just afraid Fox will panic and try to use them against us."

"By threatening Jenny?" Paul imagined Scott's reaction if Fox tried to hurt Jenny. He shivered despite the heat.

"Maybe," Tia said. "But maybe not." She returned her attention to the base, and mentally received a message from her brother Tony that he'd just subdued a guard and was struggling into the man's uniform. The pants were too big and the shirt hung nearly to his knees. (Well next time,) Tia smiled to him (pick on someone your own size.)

o O o

"I don't believe a word of it," Fox said, but he was sweating. He glanced at the clock. It was almost twenty hundred. "You think I'm going to call out base security because a UFO is going to land in the compound?"

"A UFO roughly the size of a New York City block," Jenny corrected, "and yes. You pissed off the wrong people, George."

"So they're going to land and just bust you out, is that it?" Fox forced a laugh. "They're going to land and be some kind of interstellar SWAT team - "

"You don't know what weapons they have," Jenny reminded him. "And you don't know what they're capable of. Mind-control, hypnosis, I don't know. But they seem to have absolute faith that they'll be able to break into this compound and walk away with me and Scott. Paul thinks they can do it. All I have to do is know where Scott is and be ready to run when they tell me to."

Fox snatched up the phone. "Then I'll move Scott. There are hundreds of miles of underground tunnels here, it used to be a - "

"A nuclear weapons storage facility," Jenny said. "Amazing what SALT talks can accomplish."

"How did you know that?"

"Same way I knew Scott was here. They have people in the government."

"That's a load of bull. People that highly placed in the government need security clearances. I am absolutely sure being an interstellar alien would show up in a background investigation."

She smiled coldly at him. "Take that chance, George. And go ahead, move Scott. They'll search until they find him."

"I'll call for back-up. I'll set up a trap to snare them."

"The minute you get on that phone they'll know and won't show up. You'll be calling out the Air Force for a UFO and looking damned silly when it doesn't show up."

Fox put the phone down and studied her across the desk.

"And your plan?"

"My plan?" Jenny leaned back in her chair. "My plan is very simple. I tell you how to stop them. You'll have a whole hangar full of aliens to keep you happy for the rest of your life, George. You won't need my fifteen year old boy."

"Tell me your plan, exactly. To the very last detail. And maybe then we'll discuss your options, Mrs. Hayden."

o O o

Scott spent a few anxious hours worrying that he'd never see Jenny again, and while he worried he sat on his bed, knees drawn to his chest, and felt something growing within him. He hadn't felt it since San Francisco. It was hard and strong and scaring him. About three hours after the door had closed it opened again, and they brought Jenny back.

"How you doing?" she asked, holding him, stroking his hair.

"Hungry," he joked. "They forgot dinner."

Jenny's hands cupped his face. "Scott, I need you to listen to me. Whatever happens tonight, whatever goes down, you have to know I'm doing it for us. Do you understand?"

"What's going to happen?" he asked, afraid.

"We'll be safe," she said. Jenny pulled him to his chest. "Just remember that. We'll be safe, and we'll be together. And that's what really counts."

o O o

"Paul, get in the jeep," Tia said.

Paul hesitated. He looked out across the dark desert, to the lone light that shone at the front gate of the base. The building complex was about five miles beyond the front gate but from there he felt the stirring of anxiety. He looked back at Tia. "Scott."

"He's all right," she assured him. "I can feel him. Jenny's with him."

Paul tried to shake his foreboding and got into the jeep. Tia rolled it along easily. The tires bounced over the rocks with near silence. She didn't turn on the lights; no need to, not with her mind's eye finding its way unerringly without light. They swung up to the barbed wire fence, sailed over it in the jeep, and landed with a graceful bump. Under Tia's mind power they rolled about a half mile, and then she turned on the ignition.

o O o

It dropped out of the sky like a massive white neon sphere, maybe the most massive sphere in the universe, and if the snipers stationed on the roofs and in the foxholes hadn't been expecting it they would have opened fire the minute they saw it. Faster than a raindrop it fell out of the sky, growing larger and larger and finally blotting out the sky; then it slowed, seemed to hover with a hum, and then landed with a bump two hundred yards from the main complex. Fox, watching from the underground bunker, motioned to his security chief. "Tell them to fire a few rounds. If they don't fire at all the aliens will get suspicious."

The security sergeant looked at Fox like he was crazy. The monitors all showed the massive glowing spaceship. The radio was awash with static and the garbled, broken-up communications from the guard posts. Only once before had the sergeant seen something this monstrous and amazing; Meteor Crater, Arizona. He wiped the back of his mouth with his hand. "Fire a few shots at it," he ordered.

From the speakers they heard the staccato burst of fire, and nothing happened to the spaceship.

"What now?" the sergeant asked Fox.

Fox was barely aware of the recording machines, the excited mutterings of the scientists, the hot phones to the National Defense Command and Strategic Air Command. He too remembered the meteor crater. His underarms itched with sweat and he felt his pulse skipping along with anticipation. "Wait until they come out, then cut all base electricity."

"Do what?" the sergeant asked dumbly.

"All of it," Fox ordered. "Every single bit."

o O o

Tony exited the elevator and was stopped by the first guard posted in the long sterile hall to Scott's room.

"What are you doing-" the guard asked, raising his gun, but Tony levitated him to the ceiling and jammed the trigger on the gun so that it wouldn't fire. He sent the two guards rushing for him to the ceiling also; they clung there, looking silly, pinned to the white tile.

"I'll be right back," Tony promised, and he hurried to Scott's door. It had an electromagnetic lock on it and he didn't have time to search for the card or get Tia, whose specialty was locks. Tony concentrated on the lock and felt it weaken a little; he shorted out a circuit, and it sizzled and let the door click open.

"Hi Jenny," he said. "Nice to meet you, Scott. Ready?"

"Who are you?" Scott asked as a klaxon started sounding.

"Sort of an intergalactic cousin," Tony said. He tossed something to Scott. "Catch."

Scott caught the Maker and looked at Tony in amazement. "You - "

He didn't finish as Jenny pulled him off the bed. "We have to get moving."

Jenny spared no extra looks for the guards pinned to the ceiling but Scott was wide-eyed until they got to the elevator and the lights died. Tony listened intently. No air-conditioning, either. Only the lights on the emergency exit signs stayed illuminated, and they were operated by battery. He sent a message to Tia, who was waiting with Paul behind a pile of sandbags near the spaceship. Tia told him the spaceship was dark. Without the base's energy to feed off it was useless, and George Fox obviously knew that.

(Be careful, Tony) Tia sent, worry obvious in her thoughts.

"Great," Scott said, shivering in the darkness. "How do we get out?"

Tony pulled a pencil flashlight out of his sleeve and shone it on the closed elevator doors. "No problem," he said, fighting to keep his voice steady. Fear was useless, he reminded himself. He opened the doors with mind power. It was eerie, standing in the dark interior as the car rose on Tony's power alone; Scott gripped his mother's hand tightly. Jenny's expression tightened into a scowl. "Almost out," Tony reassured them, and when they reached the first level tunnel Tony stopped the car and opened the doors. The mile-long tunnel was very dark but the jeep was where Tony had left it. He shined the flashlight on it and was very surprised when George Fox's men slid a hypodermic in his arm.

The world wavered and went black, but before he collapsed Tony sent (Tia!)

Tia turned to tell Paul, but he'd already left.

o O o

"No!" Scott cried out, as battery lanterns switched on and Fox and his men became obvious in the yellow pools of light. Fox and five guards, all of them armed, one of them now holding Tony's slumped body. Jenny put a restraining hand on Scott's shoulder.

"Scott, wait," she pleaded.

"Just as you said it would happen, Mrs. Hayden," George Fox smiled. He nodded at his men and they loaded Tony into their jeep. "You came through, in the end."

Scott looked at Jenny in confusion. "Mom?"

"I did it for us, Scott," Jenny said, but she didn't meet his eyes. She was looking instead at Fox. "Now you keep your part of the deal."

"As soon as he turns over that little crystal sphere," Fox said, motioning towards the Maker in Scott's hand.

"You can't have it," Scott said defiantly, clenching his hand and pulling it to his chest.

"Scott, please," Jenny said. She put her hands on his shoulders and levelled a sorrowful gaze at him. "Hand it over."

"Dad's alive, isn't he?" Scott asked, and when she didn't answer he felt little pieces of himself breaking off into sorrow and grief and betrayal. His last fortress had crumbled. Jenny had sold them. He didn't know for what price or on what terms but he understood it with every sense of his half-human, half-alien being.

Jenny's hand closed over his fist and slowly her fingers pried open his; as he let the Maker slip into her gasp he bowed his head, fighting back the tears that threatened. Jenny took the Maker and handed it to Fox.

"Good, good, good," Fox said. "Into the jeep, we'll go back to the main compound, and we'll see about this spaceship."

"And then you let us go," Jenny said.

"And then I let you go," Fox agreed, and he marvelled at how stupid Jenny Hayden really was.

o O o

Paul slipped into the darkened hallway, trying to remember the floorplan of the complex. Tony had gone undercover for two weeks as a repairman in the base compound and he'd sent Tia messages detailing every elevator, every stairway, and every passage he could find or heard about or saw on the blueprints. Now Paul was using that inside information to get to the underground road that ran from the main complex to the silos where they'd been keeping Scott. It took more of an effort for him than it did Tia or Tony but he energized an elevator with his Maker and reached the bottom. He spent five worried minutes in the darkness, waiting for the guards posted in the compound with rifles to appear, but they didn't come. Instead he saw two sets of headlights rapidly approaching in the tunnel. Paul stepped into the shadows and it wasn't until the jeeps stopped and everyone was standing that he showed himself.

"Fox," he said, and Fox whirled with a gun in hand.

"Dad!" Scott said, stepping forward, but Jenny held him back with a frightened expression on her face. The five guards had their automatic rifles aimed at Paul but Paul only had eyes for Fox.

"So you show yourself at last," Fox said. "I guess your little plan didn't work."

"It would have," Paul said, and his gaze flickered to Jenny for a second.

"I had to do it," Jenny said. She tightened her grip on Scott's shoulders but he pulled away, shaking his head.

"How could you?"

"Because I love you," Jenny said, wiping at her eyes. "And I can't stand to lose you again."

"You already did," Paul said. Scott ignored the guns and pushed past Fox too fast for the government agent to stop him. He burrowed his head against Paul's chest and Paul rubbed his back reassuringly. "It's all right. Everything's all right."

"Don't you see?" Jenny asked desperately. "If you give yourself up he doesn't need Scott. He has the spaceship, he has Tony . . ."

Paul's attention shifted to the unconscious young man in the second jeep but Fox's next words cut off whatever he was going to say.

"He doesn't have to give himself up. He's ours now." Fox turned to Jenny. "Is there anyone else?"

Jenny wrapped her arms around her chest and implored Paul with her eyes to forgive her. "There's a girl, up in the compound with a jeep they came in."

"Jenny," Paul said, shaking his head.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"We're leaving," Paul said, taking a step backwards with Scott, "and there's nothing you can do to stop us."

"You're not going anywhere," Fox warned.

"The only way to stop us is to kill us," Paul told him.

"It'll save us time when we dissect you," Fox said cruelly. The guards took better aim.

"No!" Jenny cried out. "Stop it!"

"It would have worked," Paul said sadly to her. "Goodbye, Jenny Hayden."

Paul pulled Scott backwards towards the elevator as Fox raised his own gun to fire. The government agent shouted and dropped the weapon as it seared his hand with sudden, flaring pain. The other guards dropped theirs, too. Tony, the cause of the heat, rolled out of the jeep. A guard swung at him with the butt of his rifle and Tony didn't duck in time. He staggered against the spare tire, blood flowing down the side of his head. Jenny picked up the tire iron from the jeep and smashed it against the guard's shoulder. He turned on her to grab her and then he sailed upwards into the air, up and up to the cavern's rock ceiling.

Jenny turned and saw the other guards rising as well. Even the ones who had grabbed Paul and thrown him to his knees soared upward. Fox rose, rose and rose, his arms and legs wriggling madly, his face a wild contortion of anger.

"Took you long enough," Jenny said accusingly to Tony. Her voice was shaky with relief. "I thought you were really out."

"Told you," Tony said, holding his hand to his head cut, "it takes twice any normal dosage to put my people out." He glanced quizzically at the men hanging in mid-air near the ceiling. "I'm not doing that."

"You're not - " Jenny turned to Paul and they both looked at Scott, who had grabbed Paul's Maker when it had rolled free. Scott's eyes were closed in concentration, his face coated with a thin sheen of sweat. He must have felt both of his parents' gaze upon him, because he opened his eyes and gazed at them in awe and fright combined.

"I'm doing it," he said, and the Maker glowed red in his palm.

Paul pulled himself to his feet and put his hand gently on Scott's shoulder. "Just concentrate," he told the boy. "Let it flow through you."

"Not half bad," Tony said, and with Jenny's help he left the jeep and headed for the elevator. He said to Paul, "We've got to get back to the ship. Tia's got it powered up and ready to go - "

"Forrester!" Fox yelled from the ceiling. "You won't get away."

"Too late," Paul said calmly. "We already have."

Paul ushered them into the elevator and the doors closed.

Fox swore and fumbled for the radio at his waist.

"Take out that ship!" he yelled into it. "I don't care how you do it, blast all the missiles we have, but take out that ship!"

A full moment later the ground above seemed to roar, with an earthquake or a nuclear explosion or maybe the power of an alien spaceship exploding into nothingness; and George Fox remembered thinking later that the reason he'd fallen so swiftly and forcefully to the floor was because the source of the power that had held him up there had been completely destroyed.

o O o

All of the video cameras and base monitors told the same story; at 01:12:37, a full seven seconds before the explosion and total annihilation of whatever that ship had been, all video and audio cut out. Complete blankness. Nothing recorded, nothing erased. At 01:12:46, two seconds after the explosion that registered on seismic meters as far away as California, the cameras flickered back to life and showed the fireball on the desert that had been the alien spaceship. Although witnesses claimed to have seen four people emerge from the terminal building and run towards the ship, no evidence existence on the tapes.

The metal debris from the explosion was collected for three months, cataloged and tagged, and then stored in a special hangar where it would be studied for years.

George Fox, after recovering from a badly sprained back, took to insisting in Washington that the aliens and Haydens had planned the explosion and must have escaped on the ground during the excitement; he was met repeatedly with the arguments that it was a hundred miles on open ground to the nearest towns and the search helicopters that had been airborne within minutes had found no trace of any ground escape. He became so irascible and moody that he was removed from the case, sent to work on special projects for the Pentagon, and retired early with a full government pension and a house in Maine.

For the rest of his life he seethed with anger over Paul Forrester and Jenny Hayden, and although he never stopped reading the newspapers in hopes of stories of strange aliens and half-alien children, he never met the Starman or his family again.

o O o

In the Pacific Northwest, most local townsfolk steer clear of the ancient volcano called Witch Mountain. A few of the older town residents remember a time when foreigners came to settle in the valley, European folk with strange accents who eventually died out; it was shortly after their arrival that the mountain became haunted, with faraway music and strange lights dancing in the evening mists. Most of the European folks died out or moved away, and the tales of the haunted mountain faded, but sometimes in the late summer nights an occasional unexplained light will blink beneath the stars, or a note of a strange and alien melody will drift through the pines.

A hundred miles east lies a coastal Washington community where no one has ever heard of Witch Mountain, and the only music talked about is the occasional heavy metal that seems to have gotten so popular at the high school. Jeff Doerr, riding home from school one Monday afternoon on his brand-new ten speed bicycle, had his mind neither on mountains or metal. He was thinking of trying out for the basketball team, and as he cruised through the wide streets of his street, past the neighbors and around the curves, he imagined himself at a wild center of exuberant cheerleaders after sinking the winning shot of the game.

Jeff thought a lot about cheerleaders lately. Since starting at the local high school he'd found an inordinate amount of his time preoccupied with thoughts of girls. He thought of them in class, at lunch, at the debate team meetings, at drama practice, at Honor Society functions. He thought of them so much he was forgetting that he had to keep a low-profile at school. Although the time for running was past it never hurt to keep a low profile. One day, his dad Chris kept assuring him, there'd be a time when Jeff would walk the front pages of every newspaper in the world; Chris had foreseen it a long time ago, in a promise made to his mother.

Until he saved the world, though, Jeff was determined to meet a lot of cheerleaders.

He coasted up his driveway to the split-level ranch house he could call home. Chris Doerr was in the driveway, bent under the hood of their beat-up Toyota, vainly trying to make sense of the wires and hoses and belts that made up the engine. Laura was teaching him how to change the spark plugs. "And you measure the gap with this little thing," she said helpfully, "and if it's too small you widen it this way - "

"You're making a big mistake," Jeff said. "Dad's mechanically inept, remember?"

"I am not mechanically inept," Chris said, wiping his hands on a rag. "I'm just inexperienced."

"I wish you wouldn't get experience on the microwave," Jeff complained good-naturedly. "It was a perfectly good microwave until you made it blow up."

"I don't need abuse like this," Chris said, raising his eyebrows. "I can let your mother change the spark plugs and go play my new video game. It's called 'Star Invaders' and it's about an alien invasion of the galaxy - "

"My turn for the video games," Jeff reminded him.

Laura leaned over and kissed her husband. "Besides," she said, "it's probably terribly inaccurate."

Chris grinned.

"I'm sure it is," he said.

They stood there, in the Washington sunshine, just an ordinary family gathered around the family car talking about video games and spark plugs, the stuff of normal life that they had craved for so long. Their house, their true home together, stood firm and solid and as a haven of secrets and security for the nights Jeff remembered explosions and Laura remembered horrible loneliness. If inanimate objects tended to float in mid-air in the Doerr house, if little crystal spheres glowed in the night and Chris spun tales of worlds almost too fantastic to believe, if mundane matters like insurance bills and dentist appointments and report cards were embraced enthusiastically over nightmare matters like the United States government and men in black suits - there was no one but the Starman and his family to notice.

They fell into grateful silence around the car, as if each had finally realized that peace was at hand, then linked their arms in affection and walked up the drive together.

THE END


End file.
